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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Muhammad Ali : Rare Photos

Bob Gomel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

When 25-year-old Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of the
world and the world’s single most famous Muslim, refused induction into the
United States Army in the spring of 1967 (“War is against the teachings of the
Koran,” he said. “I’m not trying to dodge the draft [but] we don’t take part in
Christian wars.”), there was little doubt in his or in anyone else’s mind that
there would be hell to pay for such a principled, public stand.

Sure enough, on the very day in April 1967 when he refused (three
times) to step forward when his name was called for induction, Ali was stripped
of his heavyweight title and his license to box was immediately suspended. Less
than two months later, on June 20, 1967, a jury in Houston, Texas, convicted
Ali of violating Selective Service laws. Sentenced to five years in prison, Ali
appealed and, in June 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction.
(Ultimately, he served no time in jail.) By the time of the Supreme Court’s
ruling, he’d already had his license to box reinstated and had returned to the
sport, winning two bouts and, famously, losing to the new heavyweight champion,
Joe Frazier, in the March 1971 “Fight of the Century” at Madison Square Garden.

So, Ali was back, allowed once again to fight for the crown —
a crown he eventually regained in jaw-dropping fashion in 1974′s legendary
“Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman. But those many, many months when
he was banned from the ring were history. They were gone. For three years,
while (largely) lesser fighters vied for the heavyweight title and while his
great nemesis, Joe Frazier, was relentlessly powering his way through the
heavyweight ranks, Muhammad Ali was, in effect, in exile. Barred from the one
place on Earth, the prizefighting ring, where his physical genius was permitted
its fullest expression, the man Norman Mailer called “the World’s Greatest
Athlete … our most beautiful man … the Prince of Heaven” was forced to find
other outlets for his energy, other venues in which his unique personality
could be given free rein